


breaking the yearlings

by magdaliny



Series: quiet americans [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Friendship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-22 06:44:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13161435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny/pseuds/magdaliny
Summary: “Uh, hi,” Jay says. He takes a deep breath. “Is there any chance I can speak to María?”





	breaking the yearlings

### March 2017

Jay's phone has been lurking at him all day.

He's projecting; he knows he is. There's nothing about calling Tank that could possibly pose a problem. His battery is fully charged. He has free international minutes in the evenings, and since it's 1322 in Philadelphia (if he's doing his math right), and a Thursday besides, it's unlikely that Tank will be doing anything besides working at the shelter for the next few hours. Steve, who's been texting him encouragement since he brought it up, should be arriving within the hour. He has time to psych himself up, and then Tank can yell at him, and Steve can take the phone if Jay loses it completely. Steve'll be here almost a week, too, so if need be, Jay can put it off for a few days, have a quiet night with Steve, talk it over, get himself ready. He's planned it very well. It's going to be fine.

But what if—

What if he calls her _now_?

He didn't sleep last night in anticipation, his brain running over every possible permutation of the phone call—what she might say, what he might respond, trying to anticipate conversational surprises as if that wasn't an impossible task—and he's exhausted. He hasn't been able to focus on anything the entire day. If his thoughts were horses, they'd all be pulling in opposite directions. The longer he waits, the more anxious he feels.

Sick of staring at the walls and needing a distraction, Jay puts on his boots and coat and takes his sketchbook into the garden. Well, _garden_ ; garden is a strong word. It's stopped snowing—in March, for god's sake!—but only just, the sky still banded silver from horizon to horizon, and there's a healthy four-inch blanket making fantastical shapes of the plants. There could be anything under there: flowers, bodies, buried gold. He's immediately glad he's outside, even though his breath is already escaping in white coils. The cold's—clarifying, somehow. On the other side of the fence, Jay hears the sound of a golden retriever having the time of his life, scuffling and snorting. A snowball flies in an arc from the direction of the porch, and down near Gertie and Jakob's polycarbonate shed, Tobermory leaps into the air and snaps his teeth around it. Jay grins in spite of himself. Dogs have the right idea. Why worry?

He tilts the nearest deck chair and kicks the underside to get the snow off of it. Looks at his phone; sighs. Yeah, pal, it's only two minutes later than it was when you checked two minutes ago. Fancy that. Jay puts it in his pocket, settles in the chair, and balances his sketchbook precariously on the arm. For the last few days, he's had an image rolling around in his head that wants letting out, but he's stubbornly refused to put it to paper until he could figure out what it meant. Now, it seems the lesser of two evils. It's dumb, really: it's just—rabbits. He can't stop thinking about rabbits. It's the memory equivalent of something at the tip of his tongue, just out of reach in the void. He wishes he could reach in and fish around, dredge up whatever's gotten itself stuck, and bring it into the light. He fills four pages with gloomy-looking hares and then gives up. Nothing useful's coming to the surface today.

Jay brushes powdery snow off the little patio table and puts the book on it before he checks his phone again. Thirty-four minutes have passed. No word from Steve. No emails. Just a blurry reflection of his face in the screen.

As fast as he can, before he can second-guess himself, Jay taps in the number he can't pretend he hasn't memorized, and presses 'call'. Oh Christ, have you done it now, he thinks as he hears it dial, sweating; you have gone and damn well done it, you stupid bastard, why couldn't you just have _waited_?

“Hermitage Interval House,” a woman says, after four rings.

“Uh, hi,” Jay says. He takes a deep breath. “Is there any chance I can speak to María?”

The woman's voice frosts over. “We may have several Marías here. You'll have to be more specific.”

For a moment Jay can't understand her sudden hostility, and then he realizes, ashamed: she thinks he's somebody's deadbeat boyfriend come to find one of those poor ladies and drag her back to whatever she ran from. He panics, then, and can't remember Tank's surname, not even the first letter—they _said it_ on the fucking _television_ , if he could just—

Desperately: “Do any of them go by Tank? She works there,” he adds quickly, before the woman can hang up, “I'm one of her—I'm a vet. She helped me before the, uh. The accident.”

“Tank!” the woman exclaims. She sounds about twenty degrees warmer. “Geez, why didn't you say so? I don't think her _mother_ calls her María. Hang on.”

 _Mother?_ Jay thinks wildly—god, he never even thought about her parents, they must be—and there's a loud clunk as the phone is set down on something. He can hear voices in the distance, distorted as if underwater, and the sound of women laughing. It unspools a little of the tension in his shoulders. He hopes the place is as bright and clean and warm as he imagines, as he tucks the phone against his shoulder and crushes a snow-stiffened leaf to pulp, staining his fingertips green. This is a mistake, he can't help thinking, this is a huge mistake; what if she doesn't want to talk to him, what if he's a trigger, what if she—

“Yeah, hello?”

Jay's heart leaps into his throat. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. Of all the things he tried to anticipate, losing his voice wasn't one of them.

“Hola, hermana,” he finally whispers.

The silence down the line is so total that he starts to worry he's lost the connection.

And then:

“You _shitheaded candyass motherfucker_!”

He nearly drops the phone. He has to yank it away from his ear as she starts shrieking in a trilingual mangle so loud it makes his jaw hurt. Tobermory commences a startled solo of his own in the side yard; Gertie's concerned face pops over the top of the hedge. Jay winces and gives her a thumbs-up around the phone he's holding at arm's length, and mouths: _I deserve it_. Gertie smiles wryly, disappearing from view. By the sound of a door banging and the way the woofing is suddenly muffled, she's dragged the dog indoors, giving Jay the privacy he'd never thought to ask for. One more bright point among the hundreds of little kindnesses he'll never be able to repay. Tank, oblivious, continues to yell.

When it sounds like she's winding down, or at least running out of air, Jay says: “Tank.” He's appalled at the sound of his voice; it's hoarse as a crow. But at least it comes out.

“ _What_.” She sounds at least as wrung-out as he does. “You—it was on the news, you asshole, I had to watch—and you were dead, there was so much _blood_ , and then that fuckin' money started coming in and I thought I'd gone and lost my goddamn _mind_ —”

“I'm—”

“—and don't you fucking dare apologize to me, takin' advantage of my good nature 'cause I ain't capable of _being_ as pissed as I wanna be, you know how many fuckin' girls we got here safe now on account of you—”

“Tank—”

“Shut _up_. I'm gonna kill you, soon as I find you. Where the fuck are you? I'm gonna shove your head so far up your own goddamn—”

“You done?” he asks, with a whole lot more bravado than he feels.

Heavy breathing. Then: “Yeah. Jesus _H_. My fuckin' heart.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fuck _you_ am I okay.”

“I'm in England,” Jay lays on the ground as a peace offering. “Safe. Not dead. Uh—mostly. Whatever you call it when they fake the death of somebody who didn't have an identity anyway. So I guess if anything I got born.”

“ _They_?” She makes a disgusted noise. “Never mind, I don't wanna fuckin' know, I ain't made for this cloak n' dagger shit. But—England? Who ran _that_ up the flag and made it salute?”

“You said you didn't want to—”

“ _I am making a murder list_ ,” Tank growls. “I can't blow up the government or whatever the fuck planning committee made you disappear, but tell me there's at least one jerkoff I can gift a wheelchair to the nuts. They recording this right now? I hope they fuckin' are, sweetheart. I hope Agent Smith's quaking in his fucking Docs.”

“Nobody's recording anything,” Jay says. He continues to live in hope, anyway. The alternative's—not a nice thought. “Steve Rogers is the guy who helped me get out here, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't punch him in the face. I like his face.”

There's a pause.

“Sweetheart,” Tank says darkly. “Are you _dating Captain America_?”

“ _Dating_ ,” Jay complains. “That makes it sound like we're twelve-year-olds holding hands in a movie theatre. We got a relationship where he doesn't touch my dick and I embarrass him every time I open my mouth. Whatever you wanna call _that_. And besides, he's not Captain America anymore.”

He expects more yelling, but after another long, frankly sinister pause, Tank says, with way too much sincerity: “I promise I won't nut your sugar daddy.”

“Tank!” He bangs his knee on the underside of the patio table, creating a tiny avalanche. “I hate you. Jesus Christ. I knew I should've let them shoot you a few more times before I cleaned up.”

It was a risk and it makes him feel sick, but it was the right thing to say: he can _hear_ the grin in her voice. “You'da waited an awful long fuckin' while. Me, I'm ironclad. Weren't you watching them bullets bounce off?”

“Sure,” Jay says, flopping back in the chair and looking up at the grey, grey sky, trying to tamp down the utterly irrational wave of emotion cresting up in his chest. “How's Sofie?”

“Good,” Tank says. “Great. She was having trouble goin' back to her old school, and the area was giving me the crawling horrors anyway, after—y'know. So we up and switched. Made herself best friends with a coupla Jewish sisters in her classes, now she's all into this modest fashion shit, _loves_ it, I never seen a kid so happy. Still talks about you all the fuckin' time. If you think for one second I ain't gonna share the good news—”

“It's fine, it's _fine_ , of course you can tell her—”

“You better send her something. You send her a present, you hear me? Her birthday's three weeks Thursday. You go find a Claire's or whatever you got there in fucking Hogsmeade. Her favourite colour's yellow.”

“I promise.” It's impulse that makes him add: “My birthday's tomorrow.”

“The fuck you telling me that for? It's too late to send a strippergram.” Jay chokes, but she ignores him. He hears shuffling papers, the sound of scribbling. “Gimme your address. I'm still gonna find you the awfullest card in Hallmark.”

“Don't prank my mailman,” he says, and tells her. “Remember, it's Royal Mail, so you gotta—”

“I know how to mail an envelope, for god's sake. And I need whatever you're callin' yourself these days.”

“Mail comes to J. Smith. James, if you're feeling proper about it, though Smith's about as real as my ID.” There's another ominous silence and a creak, down the line. “Tank?”

“James?”

“María,” he says, thinking she's teasing, but then she snaps: “ _James_?” like it's the worst curse word she knows, and he says, “Uh, yeah?”

“If you tell me your actualfacts last name starts with B,” Tank says, with teeth, “I am hanging up this fucking phone.”

Jay opens his mouth. Shuts it.

“I'm waiting.”

“Well, I can't say it _now_ , can I!” Creak. “Please don't hang up, Jesus, I didn't know. I didn't know then. And even if I had it would've mattered a whole lot fucking less than who I was to the guys who shot up you and the girls. All _they_ wanted was their gun back. It hardly matters anyway seeing as I can't remember practically anything, so I don't see what so—”

“Of course it matters! This's like finding out Elvis ain't dead and he's been snorting coke in your bathroom for the last year and oh, by the way, he gave President Kennedy a love tap last time he was down Dallas way!”

“I didn't!” Oh shit, he can feel the hysteria coming. He's going to lose it, right here. “I did _not_ , why does everyone _assume_ that?”

He thinks she's going to get mad at him for the ghoulish laughter bubbling up around his words, but he hears her snort, and then they're falling about themselves. Chickens cackling in a yard. Tank's giggling like a tiny schoolgirl. Holy god. He can't _breathe_.

“What the fuck,” Tank gasps, “What the fuck is wrong with you, that _ain't funny_ —”

 _Of course it isn't_ , he tries to say, and fails at the second vowel. They wheeze at each other until Jay gets the hiccups, at which point he has to put the phone down and swallow carefully until they stop. Tank's mostly pulled herself together by the time he picks it back up. He listens to her breathe, for just a few greedy seconds. “Sorry. I'm—I should've called you sooner, told you all of this. Made a goddamn list. I just didn't think you—I didn't think. Period.”

“Manito,” she says.

“Oh hell—don't,” he says helplessly; he thinks he can hear it in her voice, where she's heading. “I'm right on the edge, I'm gonna start with the waterworks any second now.”

“You ain't obliged to tell me shit,” says Tank. “Running for your life and you think you _owe_ me?”

“Not running. Not anymore.” She doesn't say anything, so he looks out over the hidden garden, remembering the shapes of things sleeping below. “I'm really—I'm safe. Got a home, kind of.”

“That's great,” Tank says, “But I wish—”

“It wouldn't've changed anything if you'd known who I was. Back then. It didn't change anything when I found out, except maybe a legacy I sure as hell didn't ask for.”

“It would've, we coulda done something, coulda—”

“I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad I was a nobody to you.” He hears the click of her mouth opening and says: “No, I mean it. I got to start some kind of life without trying to pick up somebody else's, I got to have a—a childhood, I guess. I know that's a crazy thing to say, considering, but I—it was good. Until. Jesus, I'm so—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Tank snarls. “What did I say about fucking apologizing? You think I'm stupid? Every time I brung somebody home I thought: I dearly hope this ain't the fuck-up. I knew one of 'em was bound to blow up in my face eventually. Way we lived had risks and we knew it—Sofie knew it too. We talked circles around it all the goddamn time. But you don't do a thing like that 'cause you think you're invincible, you do it 'cause you're fuckin' broken and being broken's no excuse for not helping somebody worse off than you. Everybody's broken, sweetheart, and there ain't no such thing as luck. A bad thing happened. Ain't your fault and ain't mine. You think you're special? You ain't any more special than the cancer that got my dad. Lungs, and him not smoking a day in his life. Shit _happens_ , baby boy. You ain't the worst thing to happen to me. Some days I think you were the best.”

With the phone clamped to his ear and his prosthetic on the closet floor, miles away, Jay can't do much more than scrub ineffectually at the side of his face and nose with his empty left sleeve. He blinks at the sky and bites his cheek, but the tears don't stop. His throat's full of phlegm; he sounds like a movie monster when he tries to speak.

“I never asked you to absolve me,” he grits out.

“Sweetheart,” Tank says wetly: “There's never been anything to _forgive_.”

 

☆

 

By the end of the call they've mostly given up having private meltdowns, and for efficiency's sake have one big meltdown together, after which Tank admits that she has to go back to work. Jay hopes he hasn't gotten her into trouble. “It's fine,” Tank says, “Lee's always buggin' me to take a longer lunch break, nobody's gonna notice I been gone, I am ninja,” but Jay's pretty sure an hour of cussing out a phone and crying is anything but subtle. He can't imagine whatever room she's in is all that soundproof.

“I ain't playing the no-you-hang-up game,” Tank says at last, interrupting his attempt to do exactly that. “Take care of yourself, Manito. Stay in fuckin' touch;” and there's a pretty definitive click.

Jay collapses in relief—in multiple reliefs. That he doesn't have to think of how to say goodbye without breaking down completely. That it's done, the scary thing, and it was horrific but also strangely okay, like draining a wound he didn't know he was carrying around. That _she's_ okay. More kindnesses from the universe he doesn't really feel like he deserves. But at the end of the day, it's not all about him, is it, and if anyone deserves that kindness it's Tank and Sofie, living and breathing and thriving somewhere he can only imagine. It all seems so unreal: the change. The last time he saw them was so—so— He feels himself begin to disconnect and drags his hand roughly backwards through his hair, tugging at the roots in an attempt to ground himself. It's getting long, he notices, surprised. He should probably go back to that nice lady barber outside Worthing, if he wants to keep it short. He's not sure how he feels about that.

It's so quiet outside that Jay clearly hears the front door open and shut, and a thud, and then the loud clumping footsteps he knows so well. Steve's only a little later than he predicted. There's something to be said for piloting your own plane, and being cosy with a billionaire besides: no layovers. Might've been weather delays at the airfield, though.

The back door opens.

“Hey,” Jay says, without turning.

A dog—a dog that _isn't Tobermory_ —barks.

Jay stands up and spins so fast that he and the chair nearly hit the ground. Since he has slightly better reflexes, the chair's the only casualty. The dog doesn't startle, just pants up at him with the adoring expression dogs have that isn't a smile but certainly resembles one. It's an enormous buff hairball of uncertain parentage; he can't even see its eyes. What Jay's thinking, as he looks at it, is a mixture of _what in the hell are you_ and _why the hell are you here_ , with overtones of a vaguer confusion he can't put words to. He doesn't know what the dog is thinking.

“What the fuck?” Jay says aloud, and only then looks over the dog's shoulder. Leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, grinning ear to ear and holding the other end of the leash, is Steve. “What the _fuck_ ,” Jay repeats, and scrubs thoughtlessly at his cheeks with the back of his hand, realizing as he does so that what he's been doing for the last fifteen minutes—i.e., bawling like a goddamn baby—is written all over his face. Steve's smile falters.

“You okay?” he asks, stepping outside.

Jay says, “I just called Tank.”

Steve manages to look like he's bullying his way through a crowd as he comes over to Jay, hitting him with a powerful hug. Jay tucks his face into Steve's neck and lets himself feel, all of it, the joy and the misery and the shame all mixed up together, a chemical bath stretching his skin. Lets it roll through him and shake him, just for a moment. A nausea he wasn't even really aware of crests and then fades away.

“How'd it go?” Steve murmurs in Jay's ear.

“How d'you think it went? It was awful. _She's_ awful.”

“She said a bunch of nice things and you guys cried all over each other like a coupla old ladies,” Steve guesses, and Jay removes his arm from Steve's back to punch him, gently, in the kidney. Steve just snorts and presses his mouth to Jay's temple. The asshole.

“Okay,” Jay says, when he's recovered a sliver of dignity, “What's with the dog?”

It doesn't really have a tail, so its whole butt starts wiggling when it decides they're talking about it.

“Gertie's cousin's got Parkinson's and she's going downhill,” Steve says. “She can't really take care of a big guy like this anymore. Gertie was going to look after him, but then we were talking, and she said how much you like Tobermory, and I asked if she thought maybe _you_ might like a dog around, and the nephew was bringing him down this week anyway, and...” Steve winces. “I know it's sort of crazy, Gertie and Jakob are happy to take him in if you don't, it's fine, I just thought—”

“What the hell is wrong with you,” Jay says, and Steve wilts a little, even though he's obviously trying to keep up a good front. “Of _course_ I'll take him. What the _fuck_. I can't believe you. Do I look like the kinda guy who says no to...to...” Jay gestures. “Whatever that is?”

“This is Miss Havisham,” Steve says. “He's—” They look at the dog. The dog, presumably, looks back. “A very good boy?”

“I'm sure he is.” Jay kneels down and reaches his hand out. “C'mere, you.”

Steve drops the leash. Miss Havisham bumbles over like he's on a ship's deck in a full gale. Jay's guessing he's about 85% sheepdog; his legs are just columns of caramel-coloured froth that go straight down to invisible paws, which are each about the size of lunch plates. If you could cross an elephant with a poodle, then Miss Havisham might be the expected result. He sniffs Jay's hand politely and doesn't try to lick his face or jump up on him. His fur is as soft as it looks, and ever so slightly oily.

“Sit,” Jay suggests. Miss Havisham plants his butt in the snow. “Shake.” The right paw raises. “Speak.” An extremely unsettling noise that sounds almost like 'hello'. Jay aims a sceptical expression at Steve.

Steve shrugs and says, “He knows loads of things. Like—well, paranoia's a symptom of Parkinson's, apparently. Miss H.—patrol.”

Miss Havisham trots off, dragging his leash. Jay stands up and puts his hand on his hip, laying odds whether he's ever going to see the dog again. A minute later, it comes back around the opposite side of the bungalow, sits at Jay's feet, and _whurf_ s happily.

“How can he _patrol_ ,” Jay says, “He can't even _see_ ,” and the moment Steve starts laughing is the moment Jay realizes he's just gone and adopted himself another gigantic blonde idiot.

 

☆

 

Jay startles awake in the middle of the night.

He knows what the rabbits mean.

He manages to eel out of bed without waking up Steve, who despite jet lag was tired enough to fall asleep before Jay, without so much as a restless twitch. Scooping his prosthetic up off the floor wakes Miss Havisham, who's dozing on the rug, but the dog just lifts his nose, gives Jay an inscrutable look, and puts his head back down on his paws.

The easel's too loud to set up, even in the sitting room, so Jay just grabs the travel gouache bag and one of his gessoed boards from behind the door, flicking the window seat lamp on and propping the board on his lap. Of course, he thinks, as he scribbles in rough shapes, an amalgam of two of the sketches he'd done in the garden: of _course_ ; why didn't he realize earlier? He's been thinking hard about Tank and Sofie for three days. And what was the last thing Sofie'd done for him, when he was sick? She'd _read_ to him. Her favourite book, she'd said, shy and bold at the same time, in that quiet way she had of being decisive without bluster, holding onto a paperback so soft-cornered and ratty he'd been surprised it wasn't falling apart in her hands. It'd been _Watership Down_.

Jay doesn't remember any important details from the book, but he doesn't think Sofie will care. She'll know what it means, he thinks. He looks down at the two bounding rabbit-shapes he's laid down on the board, one larger than the other, and knows exactly how he wants it to look—a rarity, for him; he usually has to spend an hour messing around with marker studies first. Colour composition doesn't come as naturally to him as form and value. The background will be a riot of detail, emerald fields and flowers, and the rabbits will be spare, stylized, so they stand out against the green tangle he's planning: it'll be unexpected and a little uncanny. Fitting, he hopes, fumbling a brush, for a weird story about heroic rabbits.

He's still painting when the sun comes up—the actual sun, not just a lightening sky. The clouds have burned off overnight. Jay doesn't actually notice until Steve touches his arm, and he looks outside before he looks at Steve, startled. It was dark only a minute ago, wasn't it? The snow glitters blindingly through the window. He blinks and blinks.

“Good morning,” says Steve, sounding amused.

“Hi,” Jay says. The act of turning reminds him unpleasantly that he has a body, and it's unhappy. “ _Jesus_. Okay. Mistakes were made.”

“I figured. Come on, I ran a bath. Can the painting wait?”

“It's gonna have to. Ow.” Jay grabs Steve's shoulder when the pins and needles start up. “Hang on, I'm not going anywhere for a minute.”

Steve takes advantage of their position to pick up the board. He tilts it a little and says, “I like this. It's strange but it works. Are you almost finished? I like the way you, right here—”

“Yeah. Me too. But I think it needs more—”

“No; well, maybe. I think maybe vignette it. It'll cut down on the busyness, draw the eye. If that's what you want.”

“I got an idea, I'll try it later.” Jay stretches and doesn't fall over, which probably means he can walk under his own power, but he doesn't particularly want to let go of Steve, who smells like coffee and sleep and himself. He loops his right arm over Steve's shoulders. “Show me this bath, then. You overachiever. First you bring me a dog, then you supply hot water on demand—”

“Happy birthday,” Steve says.

“See, that'd work better if you didn't do this shit for me every time you visited,” Jay says. “Points for effort, though.”

Jay assumes he's going to be joined in the bath, but Steve brings coffee and leans companionably on the edge of the tub instead. They have breakfast—Steve makes himself porridge, because he's boring, and thoughtfully leaves enough for Jay to try Gertie's oatmeal cookie recipe, so Jay can't even rag him about it—and then they walk the monstrosity, which goes exactly the way he expects. Miss Havisham is well-behaved on the leash and polite with other dogs, of which there's surprisingly many, given it's 0700 on a chilly Friday. Clearly Jay needs to get out of the house more. On the way back, Steve gets this determined look on his face, as if he's sizing up the whole world for a fight, and then he loops arms with Jay like they're an old-timey couple out of a tintype. Jay decides not to draw attention to it, and Steve slowly relaxes.

“So,” Steve says, when there's nobody on the lane, “The big one hundred. How d'you feel about it?”

“I,” Jay says: “Is it _really_? Christ, it is, isn't it. 1917. If I think about that too hard I'm gonna lose my marbles.”

“It's nutty.”

“But it's also kind of—” Jay makes a face and waves the prosthetic, which gets to hold both the leash and the flowers they've bought for Gertie, since it doesn't get cold; unintentional perks. Miss Havisham glances at him. “I don't know. It's dumb. Like I didn't do anything to deserve it but I'm proud anyway.”

He looks at Steve, who's nodding with a lot of feeling. “We got this far, in spite of everything. Right?”

“I'm here, they're not,” Jay says. “That's something.”

 

☆

 

Gertie and Jakob come over early, Gertie with her sleeves already rolled up, ready to take over half the kitchen, and Jakob carrying the photo album he promised he'd find and show Steve on his next visit. Tobermory and Miss Havisham indulge in an ecstasy of butt-sniffing like it hasn't been less than twenty-four hours since they last met. Jay kicks them outside.

“Thanks again for your help, Mrs. Katz,” Steve says shyly, presenting her with the bouquet, and Jakob gives Jay a big wink over Gertie's shoulder before he drags Steve off for another semi-annual meeting of their Who Had It Worse In The War club. Jay's eternally grateful for the relative insularity of small English villages: Gertie and Jakob are the only ones to have cottoned on to Steve's real identity, and they're not interested in sharing it with anybody.

“Boys,” says Gertie, clucking her tongue. Jay doesn't point out that none of the people currently in the house have matched that description for a decade or several. “War stories are like fish stories. They get bigger every time they're told.”

“You sure that's _fish_ stories?” Jay asks, and Gertie roars laughter.

The Nurse comes home with a newspaper, and sits at the table and reads it aloud to them at Gertie's request. Jay gets distracted by Gertie's salty commentary and nearly burns the gravy. Eva and company arrive just in time for Maghrib, which means Jay barely catches a flash of green hijab and a “halloo!” from Tabby before she disappears into the bathroom. Eva sends the kids out into the garden to chase the dogs, or vice versa, and pretends to swoon into the nearest chair like a woman whose day job involves Elizabethan drama of both the literal and the teenage variety. “Bean me,” she says, and Jay pours her a very pointed cup of decaf. Out in the garden, someone yells: “I found a _dead frog_!”

“Have some battenberg, dear,” says Gertie.

“Gosh, look at all this,” Tabby exclaims, when she comes back from prayer. “Is there anything I can't eat, Jay? Gert?”

“I don't think so,” Gertie says, “I've made it as kosher as I'm able, in this _treyf_ kitchen,” and she glares around at the walls as if she can make the house extrude a second sink out of pure shame. Jay wouldn't be surprised, honestly. Maybe that's why her garden does so well. It's just terrified of disappointing her.

“Good enough for me,” Tabby says. “Let me peel those carrots or something, won't you?”

The old kitchen has never seen so many people, Jay thinks, as it does during dinner. Half of them have to eat on trays Gertie and Jakob brought over; the table's too small. Jay sits on the counter next to the stove and soaks it all up, the warmth and laughter and the smell of good food, the whole carefully crafted atmosphere of comfort and cheer, and not a molecule of fear living in anyone. You made this happen, he tells himself wonderingly: how about that.

For all that he'd teased Steve, Jay made sure to forbid anyone from buying presents—“Y'all being here is enough of a gift,” he'd said last week, and Gertie'd smacked him—but he should've been more specific, because Steve stands up after dinner and makes a toast: “To the best guy any guy ever had,” he says, “May the roof above you never fall in,” to a chorus of small children making gagging noises. That would be enough for anybody's poor heart, but then Eva says, “A flock of blessings light upon thy back,” and before he can put a stop to it, Gertie takes Jay's face in her hands and recites something in Hebrew, and Tabby beside her claps and says, “ _Jazakallahu Kairan_!” The Nurse is his favourite person: she drops a plate at the precise spot most likely to cause the dogs to make a scene, and allows him to escape outside without anybody noticing, just long enough to compose himself.

 _I hate you_ , he mouths at Steve over Jakob's head, when he comes back in, and Steve, the absolute bastard, just grins.

 

☆

 

With only the hall light on, it's dark enough in the kitchen to see out into the moonlit garden as Jay washes the dishes. He can already see the tips of plants poking up out of the snow after the sunshine did a number on it through the afternoon. He doesn't think there'll be much left by noon tomorrow. Or, well—today. It must be after midnight. The dogs are asleep under the table; Tobermory refused to be shifted from Miss Havisham's side, so Gertie gave up and allowed the sleepover. Steve should be back any minute from escorting Tabby home, like the gentleman he is. Eva took the kids more than an hour ago, pleading exhaustion all around, Benj demonstrably asleep on her shoulder, but Tabby bravely stuck around to talk politics with Steve and Jakob. (For a given value of “talk.” Jay'd caught the Nurse guarding the doorway to the sitting room, watching the shouting like it was a sports match and she had good money on the little one.)

Steve must've taken his shoes off and put all of his energy into sneaking, because he announces his presence by sliding his arms around Jay's waist from behind. Jay will deny forever that it makes him yelp. One of the dogs growls in his sleep.

“Finally,” Steve says, sighing. It was a dry evening and Steve can't get drunk anyway, but he sounds it: hazy and tired and happy. “Got you all to myself.”

“Oh, do I know you?” Jay asks. Steve bites his ear. “You're gonna have to wait. I'm married to this sink for another ten minutes.”

“Fine,” Steve says, but doesn't let go. He nudges Jay's jaw with his chin. “Nice of the snow to stick around for your birthday.”

“Sure.”

Steve sounds surprised. “You don't think so? I thought you loved it.”

“I dunno,” Jay says. “I guess—dates didn't matter, before,” he mumbles, worried he's going to say it wrong; he's never tried to explain it to anyone, what he realized, out there in the dirt. Steve breathes against his neck and waits. “Calendars didn't mean anything. Hours I knew, sure, but weeks and months were things that happened to everybody else. If they'd sent me in a time machine I wouldn't've noticed because I just—didn't have the concept. That time passed. And even after, it wasn't like there was anything that made parts of the year different from other parts.”

“And snow out of season is bad because?”

“It's just that a garden's so structured,” Jay says. “It's all about time. You don't just do things at the right time, either—you gotta be ready for them. It took me the better part of a year to figure out how to deal with the whole idea of it, and now it's burned into my brain. So to speak.” He puts the last of the dishes on the drying rack and twists the strainer. “Stuff like this throws off my rhythm.”

“Sorry.”

“S'not all bad. Makes me gladder for the times when it all works out. So, were you planning on sniffing me all night, or...”

Steve hums. “Any ideas?”

Steve's fingers have slowly been making their way under Jay's shirt. It isn't as overt as it seems; if Jay's been learning anything over the last six-or-so months, it's that Steve's a really tactile, touchy person, but hates asking for things unless they're joking around, and Jay's pretty sure Steve's harbouring a secret horror of pushing Jay further than he wants to go.

They've only once had something that might, in a court of law, constitute “sex,” and even then, Jay'd had to practically pin Steve down and bribe him into touching himself—not that Steve had minded, really. Is it even properly sex, Jay wonders, if only one person's involved? These days he has a better grasp of the mechanics, courtesy of Eva tossing a bunch of (in her words) quality smut at him in a well-meaning attempt to fill in the gaps she perceived in his bad-jokes repertoire, and although his reaction had largely been bafflement he'd also come to think that maybe he wouldn't be completely averse to his body being a participant in future...fumblings. Some of his body, anyway. It's not like Jay gets nothing out of it; kissing and touching are nice enough, and more of a good thing can't be all bad, can it? Let it not be said that he isn't willing to _try_.

And there's really only one way to find out.

Jay grabs Steve's hands on his waist and rocks his hips backwards experimentally. Steve makes a gut-shot noise, and drops his head onto Jay's shoulder.

“If I called you easy, would you be insulted?” Jay asks curiously, repeating the motion.

“ _Easy_ —says the guy with his fingers on all the goddamn—buttons.”

“I haven't gotten my fingers on any of your buttons yet, but I can if you like.”

“Not gonna get the chance if you keep that up,” Steve says through his teeth.

Jay turns and gives Steve a push in the right direction; he looks a little dazed. “C'mon, then. If you do perimeter while I finish cleaning up, you get the world's most incompetent handjob.”

Steve manages a loony grin. “It's gotta be incompetent? What do I get if I'm done my chores before you?”

“What kinda establishment do you think I'm running, here? Shitty handjobs only.”

“Shucks,” says Steve, flicking off the hall light and pretending to leave, “With that offer on the table, maybe I'd better just take care of things myself.”

Jay grabs Steve's wrist and Steve twists, Jay pivoting in his socks and turning them both, pinning Steve against the counter, Steve letting him, laughing into his mouth; and they never end up making it to the bedroom, after all.

 

☆

 

The day before Steve flies home, two days after Jay mails the painting and a whole bag of colourful earrings and detachable collars to Philadelphia, an envelope arrives in the mail with an American stamp on it.

“Well,” says Steve, “Aren't you going to open it?” when Jay just sits on the end of the bed and stares at it, unsure if he's ready to hold something with Tank's _actual handwriting_ on it, half terrified it's going to wreck him and half terrified she's managed to smuggle a live alligator inside. No; it's okay. He can be rational about this. It's fine.

“Of course I'm gonna open it,” Jay says.

He stares at it some more.

“Oh, for god's sake.” Steve takes it from him. “It's just a card, it's not—” He stops with the card halfway out of the envelope, an indescribable expression on his face. “Uh.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, bouncing up and walking out of the room, envelope held on the other side of his body so Jay can't even catch a glimpse of it. “You're not allowed to see this.”

“Get the fuck back here,” Jay calls. “How'm I supposed to thank her if I can't see the fucking card?”

“It says Happy Birthday!” Steve shouts back. “That's all you need to know!”

 

☆

 

> _Dear Tank:_
> 
> _Thank you very much for the birthday wishes. I'm sure they were complimentary, but I'm afraid haven't seen the card itself on account of Steve destroying it on arrival. I'm reasonably certain he's fed it to the dog. I won't ask where you found it just in case he decides to dispose of your corpse in the same way. Thanks for traumatizing my life partner. Same time next year?_
> 
> _Love,  
>  J  
>  _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, friends, and Happy New Year to those of you who follow the Gregorian calendar! <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [unexpected and a little uncanny](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13317564) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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